


Silence is the Bravest Sound

by lazarus_girl



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:38:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/pseuds/lazarus_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “Lies, repeatedly told, Quinn knows, aren't a lie, but rather, a version of the truth.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Everything Everything [Quinn]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cuteginger](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cuteginger).



> AU ish (roughly follows established S1-S3 canon, but there’s no set time period). Switches point of view between Quinn and Rachel. A concept piece born from the prompt of “realisation.” Essentially, it’s about how Quinn and Rachel come to realise their feelings for each other, arriving at the same place from very different perspectives. Actually a ficmix, but the number of tracks it has doesn't meet the 8tracks limit, so [here's](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v288/kateluvsjoaquin/Fan%20Art/faberryfront.png) the art I made for it. Tracklist/running order correlates each chapter.Thank you to [@cargoes](http://cargoes.tumblr.com/) for her beta skills and cheerleading.
> 
> Originally a posted as a single chapter work but re-edited for ease of reading.

***

 _I've never I’ve never known another love_  
 _who looks at me the way you do_  
 _and sees the light,_  
 _the dark,_  
 _the truth_  
 _and my real name_  
– Lianne La Havas, ‘Everything Everything.’

***

Love – the kind they talk about in novels and in movies like it's something big, wild, and precious – has always eluded her. She thought she had it with Finn. She craved it with Puck. She pretended to have it with Sam. No matter who it was, it only came to her in brief moments, there and gone too soon, like quicksilver, straight through her hands. A promise. A dream. A nightmare.

It’s unattainable and seemingly within her reach, if she could only have the courage to dare to reach for it. She doesn't know exactly, when the burning hatred – yes, concrete hatred – she had for Rachel Berry shifted shape, made into burning of another kind. One born into something else by strange breaths of hopes and wishes, in between the words she knows cut people, and Rachel especially deep. They're meant to; sharp shards of things to keep ties severed and her world clean.

The loneliness just feeds her longing. It’s buried deep, pushed in the darkest corner of her, in the same shadowy space as the taunting and the hours and hours of sheer hell it took to become someone else, leaving Lucy well and truly behind.

Until now.

From the moment they met – clashed – Rachel saw through the carefully constructed lie. It was inevitable they’d reach this place, purely because Rachel refuses to give up; daring to trust, daring to care, when everyone else does the opposite. She has to try twice as hard to keep up the façade, and even then, she’s barely keeping up. Disarmed and vulnerable beyond nakedness. Once, it was as easy as breathing. Lies, repeatedly told, Quinn knows, aren't a lie, but rather, a version of the truth. An accepted truth she’s helped the world to swallow while choking upon it herself.

It's the purity of Rachel's feelings that she can't stand; never feeling deserving, and yet, craving the attention all the same. It's the sheer depth of feeling she sees in Rachel's eyes every time they look at each other that she can't seem to shake. The image keeps her awake at night, burned in to the back of her mind. Indelible. Seeing that light, that hope, that promise, is too much, even before the kind words and sincere encouragement, made all the worse because Rachel means every one. Knowing that if she only let herself being loved that much might fix her, make her whole and functioning. A real girl, with a real, solid life instead of playing pretend.

People have loved Quinn Fabray, but no one’s ever loved Lucy. It’s terrifying.


	2. New Pair of Eyes [Rachel]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621192/chapters/1121108).

***

 _Everything's tender again_  
 _the veil fell apart in my hands_  
 _every tree in the city is marvelling with me_  
 _we're watching the miracle dance_  
– Sarah Slean, ‘New Pair of Eyes.’

***

She doesn’t know when it started exactly. She can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the world seemed to turn a little slower and shine a little brighter every time she looked at Quinn Fabray. Usually, these things are an epiphany of some kind, brass band fanfares or at least a swelling string section, but there was nothing of the sort. No discernable line could be drawn between one state and the next, and it infuriates her. She’s laid awake night after night, meticulously going over their every interaction for the slightest hint of when the change occurred, to better understand what it all means. Every time, she’s none the wiser, and Quinn is just as big an enigma to her as the day they first met.

No one likes a clueless heroine. Bold, ambitious and determined, yes, but lovesick and confused? Certainly not.

Finn. She thought that getting Finn, her leading man who she watched from afar and dreamt of so often and never thought she would never truly have, would make her life complete. Be careful what you wish for, they say, and she never really understood what that meant until that giddy feeling she used to get whenever they’re around each other was replaced by a hollow emptiness that just seems to gnaw away at her. They don’t mesh. They don’t fit, they never really have, and no amount of push and pull will make it work. Some of the greatest love stories she’s ever seen are born out of opposites attracting. She thought that Finn was her very own Mr Darcy, but now she’s not so sure, because Quinn has become so much more than the bitchy Cheerio who ridicules her and tears her down for the fun of it.

In musicals, there are songs and elaborate dance routines dedicated to the sudden surge of butterflies she gets in her stomach every time she and Quinn happen to cross paths. In real life, she hears nothing, no matter how hard she listens. There’s only the beat of her heart; speeding, growing evermore unsteady. The musicals lied to her. Barbra, Julie, and Audrey lied, barefaced, over and over and she can’t help but feel a little let down. Penchant for the dramatic aside, her dads always tell her to see the good in the world, to believe in its own kind of magic, but she knows that Quinn can’t possibly feel like she does – as light as air, free as a bird, at the very peak of joy – because she looks so lost, so pained, and so incredibly sad. Melancholy has a beauty all of its own that she can readily appreciate, but she doesn’t like to see Quinn suffer, and she has, so much, beyond what’s right or remotely fair.

She’s always wanted to help Quinn, to bolster her confidence, because people are rarely aware of their own gifts unless someone points them out, or they’re as perceptive and self-aware as she is. It’s a common problem, her dads say, in girls of their age. Quinn doesn’t know her worth, and for all her extensive vocabulary, she can’t seem to put the right words together. When she tells Quinn that she’s pretty or smart, the girl who stares back at her does so in disbelief.

One day, she’ll know exactly what to say to make Quinn understand. Maybe then the fanfares will come. Until that day, she’ll have to be content with making it up in her mind, imagining every step of complex choreography, every note, and key change of the perfect love song she’s yet to write. It helps while away the hours until morning.


	3. Walls [Quinn]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621192/chapters/1121108).

***

 _You're the one who taught me not to fall,  
you broke the lock to all my hidden doors._  
– Rae Morris, ‘Walls.’

***

Sometimes she wishes she’d never gotten dragged into glee club, bringing Brittany and Santana along for the ride, but like most decisions in her life, she feels like she didn’t really make it on her own. It was something she had to do to keep afloat and stave off sinking. She’s never had any real control. Her life happens to her. Choices are a luxury she’s never been afforded. If she’d never gone into that choir room, she’d never know that there was a whole other world in her school. One that that wasn’t suffocating under the weight of being pretty, popular, and perfect. 

Being Lucy was hard work, but being Quinn is a different kind of tyranny that seems harder to break away from, even if Rachel constantly tries to show her there’s another way. Knowing there’s another way makes enduring everything that little bit harder. There are some things you just don’t _do_. Being at the top of the tree was supposed to mean she had the freedom to do what she wanted and behave how she wanted, and was true, to an extent, but also meant she had so much more to lose than everyone else. There’s no allowance. There’s rules and social order that are too entrenched and brittle to think of bending. 

She’s glimpsed it, how much better her life could be if she just let everything go and let herself believe Rachel when she says she’s more than just a pretty face. She does let go, in that choir room, and in between the phrases they sing, she imagines a new life for herself. A life where she could talk to Rachel in the hallway or sit with her at lunch and no one would bat an eyelid. A life where they could be more than friends, perhaps, and she’d be loved like a real person, faults and all, instead of put on a pedestal and treated like some princess. Untouchable. She feels real, when she’s with Rachel and everyone else, all together in that room; misfits banded together, safe in their oddness, free to breathe with no one to ridicule them until they open the door and get a slushy to the face. Whenever Mr Schue raises his hand to signal that rehearsal’s over, she feels her body stiffen, everything taut. Her freedom’s over too.

Except, for some people, it doesn’t end when the choir room door opens. Some people get to live like that all the time. Rachel is the epitome of that other life. Rachel is kindness, confidence, and everything she’s not. She cares about all the right things. She cares about everyone in that room, even if they wouldn’t profess to caring about her. If she’d grown up in a house like Rachel’s she’d be a different girl. A better girl. That’s what makes her angry, incandescent with rage – Rachel _knows_ everything (she can read her like book) and it’s because Rachel knows her so well that she wants to be better. She wants to prove her wrong.

Keeping this great, heavy secret in her heart is a choice. It’s the first real one she’s made in her life, and she won’t go back on it. Her world is too delicate for it to be any other way. She’s rebuilt her life twice already. She hasn’t got the strength to do it again.


	4. Come Talk to Me [Rachel]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621192/chapters/1121108).

***

 _I did not come to steal  
This all is so unreal   
Can you show me how you feel now   
Come on, come talk to me_  
– Bon Iver, ‘Come Talk to Me.’

***

They’ve been edging towards each other over the years, she realises it now. Step by step, imperceptibly. It makes her wonder if this was all predetermined, serendipity, as they say. Star cross’d, tied by that red string of fate she always hears so much about. The tug she feels in her heart whenever someone says Quinn’s name is real enough to her. All the greatest love stories start with a twist of fate and are troubled by some obstacle. Except, this time, there’s no disapproving parents or best friends to berate or disown them. The only obstacle they have is each other, or more precisely, the only obstacle is that they’re afraid of what they feel. She’s afraid of waking up one day and _not_ feeling what she does for Quinn. She assumes that Quinn is afraid of the opposite. That’s what makes this so hard. They could be something real and long lasting, if only they could just take that last step. If only Quinn would trust her and drop her guard, just once. 

It feels like she’s standing on the edge of something huge and life-altering that she never bargained for. Rachel Barbra Berry has her life mapped out, perfectly planned down to the last detail. New York. Broadway. Tonys. The love of a good man who’s just like her dads. 

Lucy Quinn Fabray wasn’t part of the plan, but, maybe that _was_ the plan after all. 

She should hate her, for turning her world upside down and ruining everything, but it doesn’t feel like ruin when she watches her in the choir room, head stuck in a book whiling away the time until Mr Schue arrives with their latest assignment, and she smiles at something she’s just read. It feels like she’s looking at real beauty, unfiltered. A world away from supermodels and celebrities. A world away from her. For all that closeness they’ve achieved, snatches of conversation where they’ve shared something tangible and important, Quinn still seems so very far away. Unattainable. Unreadable. Forever out of reach. She should hate her for all she inspires. Notebooks worth of prose and lyrics, scribbled hastily when the mood strikes her, but she can’t bring herself to, because it makes her feel better, exorcising these secrets, these demons, that she can’t seem to let go. She thought that her feelings – whatever they are, because like and love feel too small now – would’ve dulled in some way. That the foggy desire she feels in the dead of night at and the break of morning would lessen, but it’s still there, constant, part of her. She’s beginning to forget what it was like before they met. 

Whether Quinn feels the same is the only thing she’s never been able to pin down, but she’s sure that this isn’t some flight of adolescent fancy or the result of watching too many romantic comedies with Kurt and Mercedes. If she was brave enough – the kind of brave that Santana is – she’d just ask Quinn, flat out, and the she’d know one way or the other. In that moment, everything would either fall into place beautifully, that last strange, jagged piece of jigsaw snapping in to reveal the picture of the future she’s worked so hard to try and figure out; or it would crash around her ears and leave her shattered. Either way, she thinks her heart might be in danger of breaking, but at least she’d know. Certainty is better than this. Anything is better than floundering in the unknown for perpetuity.


	5. You Get Me [Quinn]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621192/chapters/1121108).

***

 _If I say no, if I resist  
if I don't give in to this  
would it be a lesson or a loss?_  
– Teitur, ‘You Get Me.’ 

***

Rules and structure, that’s the way Fabrays do things. Their favourite is denial: everything important goes unsaid. Everything that might cause them to say important things is swept under the rug. Denial is good, it’s her cushion. It’s kept her safe all this time. If you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. Once the words are out there, you can never take them back. They define you. She only has to look at Santana and the way she looks perpetually on edge whenever she walks down the hall hand-in-hand with Brittany to know that. 

There’s one thing she can’t deny, even with all her skill. Rachel is well and truly under her skin. In the space between her heart beats. She’s used to hiding what she truly feels. She’s even more used to biting her tongue when everything around her looks wrong, and she can see Rachel and everyone else barrelling headlong into mistakes they can never undo. She’s always been this way. A timid and cautious child, she didn’t get the space to bloom and grow into her full height, so it’s making her turn into a conditioned and careful adult. On the brink of eighteen, on the brink of everything and nothing. There dangers she feared the most have come and gone. She’s endured the pain and battled back. Somehow, she’s survived. She doesn’t really know how, but she’s always been strong, and stubborn to a fault. In the darkest of moments, all she had to cling to was Rachel, and everything she promises – goodness, light, happiness – and that’s what saw her through, dragged her kicking and screaming from one day to the next when all she wanted was for the world to stop and everything she feels to dull into nothingness. She’s tired now of feeling everything so deeply. She’s tired of carrying the weight of it all, but mostly, she’s just tired of being stuck in Lima. 

Maybe that’s part of the reason why she refuses to allow herself real happiness. she has that happiness, once she has Rachel, she can lose her too, and that she can’t see herself surviving with any kind of grace. It’d be ugly and painful. A watershed in her life of a different kind. It’d be so easy to give in and run to her, put everything out there and lay herself bare, lose herself in the grand sweep of romance; the kind she’s longed for and read about, craved, for years. She’s always held on to the faint hope of finding it, somewhere, somehow, but never once let herself believe it could be with the person she once called her enemy, her name spat out through gritted teeth.

Her mind runs away with her, imagining their future together. Dreams a perfect life into being. It’s always in New York whenever she does. Rachel and New York are linked inextricably in her mind – because she’s so fond of talking about it and talks of it so fondly. Coffee and bagels. Candlelit dinners. Skating in Central Park. Sitting pride of place in a packed out theatre while Rachel shines bright, like she’s always known she’s capable of. It’s appropriate, she thinks, that she lets herself imagine so broadly, so vividly, so passionately. There would be passion, she knows, because Rachel could never be accused of lacking that for anything. 

For all their differences, they’re so alike, stops on the same spectrum. If she could write down everything she’s ever imagined. Everything she’s ever felt, then she wouldn’t be in this mess. Words are no issue for her when they’re written down. There are pages and pages of them about Rachel in her journal. She barely has to think. Time turns elastic then, and the only thing that stops her is the fading light or cramp in her hand. She could leave those journals on the Berry’s doorstep, a parting gift right before she gets the train to New Haven come August. 

The distance might be a good thing. It could be the break she needs. New places. New faces. New perspectives. No Coach Sylvester. No Cheerios. No AP classes to power though. No race for Prom Queen. No glee club to break up the day. No Rachel. No Santana, Brittany, and the Unholy Trinity. No Puck, Finn, Sam, Mercedes or Artie. No Mike, Tina, Joe, that crazy Sugar girl or the sweet Irish kid, Rory. No Mr Schue. It’ll never quite be the same. It’s all over. She’ll miss them all, everything about them. Even the annoying things like Puck’s misogynist jokes, and the stupid things like Mr Schue’s attempts at rapping or Rachel’s dramatics when he dares to give someone other than her a solo. Those things make them who they are. 

It’ll be easier to think of Rachel less when they don’t see another day after day and she becomes a voice on a line or pixels on a screen. 

Yale is everything she’s ever wanted, all she’s dreamed of ever since seeing her mother’s fading photographs and listening her to nostalgia-tinged stories. Now it’s within her own grasp, all she feels is emptiness because she’ll be without the only person who truly believed she could make it happen.


	6. Greater Than I [Rachel]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621192/chapters/1121108).

***

 _What was this great idea I had planned?  
Hanging by a thread is my heart see it in your hand_  
– Kate Walsh, ‘Greater Than I.’

***

Time’s running out, running through her hands. It always has been, but she’s more aware of it now, and she wishes she had more. So much more. Their last glee rehearsal – teary, and twice the usual length – is long gone. In the end, it was little more than a jam session, with people throwing out song suggestions every minute and overlapping each other when they sang. Graduation and all the parties that have followed are long gone. A haze of bad karaoke and wine coolers in red plastic cups. Everyone’s guard is down. There’s more talk, more hand holding, now, she doesn’t feel so ridiculous when she wants to hug people. 

Quinn doesn’t even flinch when she holds out a hand for her to take. All she gets is a smile, one of Quinn’s bright dazzling smiles that she’s seen too little of outside a yearbook page – and for that moment, everything’s perfect and anything’s possible. She always feels that way whenever they touch in any small way. There’s an energy, a crackle she feels in the air between them. That’s real chemistry, she supposes, not the manufactured kind she works so hard to maintain with Finn. 

The struggle there is nearly over, she can feel it. Finn is a habit now, Finn is comfort, and she’s always known they’d outgrow each other, deep down, but it doesn’t make all this change any easier. There’s safety in routine. Life is about to tear them all asunder, and send them all on different diverging paths. Her and Kurt to New York, Quinn to New Haven, Santana to Louisville, Mercedes and Puck to California, and Finn, well, she has no real idea at all. They’ll all be in her heart, in some form, because she knows it’s special, what they’ve shared in that choir room every afternoon. They’re her friends now, the most talented, extraordinary people she’s ever known. Brave and beautiful. Even though she’s trying desperately not to, she knows she’ll miss Quinn the most, because Quinn is in the deepest reaches of her.

If she could go back to the day the first met, she’d tell Quinn right there and then, just to save herself the heartache. It is heartache now, well beyond the point she can endure it comfortably. She’s often thought about what she might say if she ever worked up the courage to tell Quinn the truth. It’s long and elaborate, and she’s sure that she’d only have the courage to say it once though, if at all. She has no problem talking, in fact, she usually has real problems shutting up, but when it comes to telling Quinn she loves her – real and definite, there’s no qualifier to denote uncertainty –she’s rendered mute by panic, and the fear that Quinn will reject her as her final act of cruelty. That’s not what she fears the most, not anymore, the years have mellowed Quinn too much to make her that cold and calculating. What she fears the most is that Quinn reciprocates her feelings. That the great torrid, tumultuous, Burton and Taylor-rivalling love affair she’s conjured in her mind for so long could actually unfold before her eyes. Concrete, not abstract.

Though it’s dangerous, this climate of good feeling has made her realise something: she hasn’t really got anything to lose. If it backfires spectacularly, as her romantic intentions often do, then she never has to see Quinn again if she doesn’t want to, but if it doesn’t, and it all plays out beautifully, then all that stands between them is the price of a ticket.

She’s all packed and ready to go, the first of them to make the break. She’s ecstatic and excited, and nervous and terrified, on the verge of tears or throwing up because everything she’s been working for her entire life is a couple of hours’ train ride away. All too soon, Quinn will be hours away too. They’ve promised things to each other – to call, to email, to Skype, to visit even, when they have the money and the time – knowing they’re making liars of themselves – innocent, white lies – all of them, when they’ve met over the summer, sipping at coffees and reminiscing having taken over the lounge section of the Lima Bean; or teary-eyed and emotional during goodbye dinners at Breadstix where they’d fight over who split the bill. Those promises got more elaborate, more ridiculous, and less easy to keep as the days ticked down. All except the one promise she’s made to herself, repeated nightly. Today is the day she’ll tell Quinn everything. 

It’s nostalgia that leads her to the auditorium for one last look while her dads wait in the car. She’s surprised to see Quinn sitting at the piano bench, idly playing something that feels vaguely familiar, but she can’t quite place it. She feels awkward, like she’s invading something deeply private, but Quinn moves along the bench anyway. They talk a little, about when she’s leaving, the dorm room she’s moving into, and the classes she’s planning to take. All cordial. All surface. They’re dancing around the inevitable. It’s the look on Quinn’s face when they fall silent that tips her over the edge. Seconds later, the hushed, shy tone of Quinn’s voice when she admits she’ll miss her that sends her sailing right over it.

All the words she’s ever wanted to say die on her tongue the second Quinn looks at her again, obviously fighting back tears. She feels it too, heavy in her heart, already breaking with the impending loss. Quinn’s never been closer to her physically, but she’s never felt further away. 

Quinn reaches then, brushing away a tear as it streaks down her cheek. The touch is so soft, so tender, that she gasps, and Quinn shrinks away. Then, it dawns on her: she doesn’t have to say anything at all. Actions speak louder. She closes the gap between them and brushes her lips against Quinn’s, just once, and pulls away again. The whole world stops and all she can hear is her heart ramming in her chest. It feels like an eternity before anything happens, and everything in her body is screaming at her to turn tail and run, because Quinn’s looking at her like she doesn’t even know who she is. Then, Quinn leans over, touching her cheek as if she’s checking she’s real, and kisses her again, slow and careful. As it builds, as she clings on to Quinn in that empty auditorium and surrenders herself, giving truly for the very first time, she hears it: a symphony of strings stir, the rumblings of a brass fanfare beginning in earnest, and a lyric, simple and pure circles in her brain: _I love you. _.__


End file.
